Guangping Lv

Novel gas sensor combined active fiber loop ring-down and dual wavelengths differential absorption method

A novel active fiber loop ring-down gas sensor combined with dual wavelengths differential absorption method is proposed. Two Distributed Feedback Laser Diodes (DFB LDs) with different wavelengths are employed. One LD whose wavelength covered with the absorption line of target gas is used for sensing. Another LD whose wavelength is centered outside the absorption line is used for reference. The gas absorption loss can be obtained by differencing the reference signal and sensing signal. Compared with traditional method of one wavelength employed, it can eliminate the influence of the cavity loss variety and photoelectric device drift in the system efficiently. An Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) with Automatic Gain Control (AGC) is used to compensate the loss of the light in the ring-down cavity, which will increase the cavity round trips and improve the precision of gas detection. And two fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are employed to get rid of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) spectrum noise as filters. The calibrating ethyne samples of different concentrations are measured with a 65 mm long gas cell in order to evaluate the effect of reference. The results show the relative deviation is found to be less than ± 0.4% of 0.1% ethyne when a certain additional loss from 0 to 1.2dB is introduced to the cavity and the relative deviation of measured concentration is less than ± 0.5% over 24 hours.

High-sensitive measurement of water vapor: shot-noise level performance via a noise canceller

Taking advantages of distributed feedback laser diode a technique is described to achieve high-sensitive measurement for water vapor concentration. This technique, with a modified balanced ratio metric detection system, has improved the accuracy of measured absorption spectrum by two main aspects. Improvement by matching equivalent conductivity of signal or reference photo detector (PD) is presented, and with the additional matched resistance suppression for the power variation in the signal-beam has been improved from 53 to 88 dB. The importance of integrating amplifier bandwidth design from the circuit to the measured absorption spectrum has been demonstrated in our experiment. For a scan rate of 32 Hz with an optimal corresponding bandwidth of 15.9 kHz, the absorption spectrum is well described by Voigt profile, with a difference of 1% at an atmosphere pressure of 1 atm and a room temperature of 296 K. With the application of averaging and filtering, absorption sensitivity of 1.093×10(-6) for water vapor at 1368.597 nm has been demonstrated, and the corresponding concentration is 71.8 ppb in just a 10 cm path length.

Research on a novel composite structure Er 3+ -doped DBR fiber laser with a π-phase shifted FBG

A simple composite cavity structure Er³⁺-doped fiber laser was proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The resonant cavity consists of a pair of uniform fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) and a π-phase shifted FBG. By introducing the π-phase shifted FBG into the cavity as the selective wavelength component, it can increase the effective length of the laser cavity and suppress the multi-longitudinal modes simultaneously. The narrow linewidth of 900 Hz and low RIN of -95 dB/Hz were obtained. And the lasing wavelength was rather stable with the pump power changing. The SMRS was more than 67 dB. The results show that the proposed fiber laser has a good performance and considerable potential application for fiber sensor and optical communication.

An Improved Denoising Method in RDTS Based on Wavelet Transform Modulus Maxima

This paper proposed and demonstrated an improved wavelet transform modulus maxima (WTMM) denoising method to decrease the temperature error without decreasing spatial resolution in Raman distributed temperature sensors. In this scheme, the WTMM were obtained by combining those on the high and low decomposition scales, and the temperature signal was reconstructed using the WTMM. Experimental results show that the new proposed method has better denoising effect than the conventional one, allowing for the temperature error reduction of ~2 °C at 30 °C and 60 °C without decreasing spatial resolution comparing to original data.

Noise investigation and signal processing in fiber optic gas sensor with wavelength modulation of the DFB laser diode

Noise from optical and electronic components of a fiber optic gas sensor system using wavelength modulation of the DFB laser diode in either transmission or reflection mode were investigated. Our experimental results indicate that reflective type cells give poorer performance due to interference effects from connectors and joints within the fiber system compare to transmissive type cell. Intensity noise from optical coupler, collimator, was measured and its affection to sensing system was discussed. In order to raise the signal to noise ratio (SNR), signal processing methods, such as data average, low pass filter were used and compared. The results would be a useful engineering tool to design high SNR optical gas sensing system.

Study of an optical fiber water vapor sensor based on a DFB diode laser: combined wavelength scanning and intensity modulation

An optical fiber water vapor sensor based on a distributed feedback (DFB) diode laser was reported. The DFB diode laser was internally driven by a low-frequency current to realize wavelength scanning; simultaneously, laser output was externally modulated through an electro-optic modulator to realize high-frequency intensity modulation. Measurement precision of water vapor concentration could be improved by two main aspects, absolute absorption profile and high signal-to-noise ratio. The experiment was carried out at 1 atm/296 K and the recovered absolute absorption profile of water vapor at 1368.597 nm was described by Voigt profile with a difference of 1%. A well linearity was achieved with an R-square of 0.9999 and the sensitivity for a 10-cm absorption length was achieved to be 6.7 × 10−8 Hz−1/2.

Intracavity KTiOAsO4 optical parametric oscillator pumped by an actively Q-switched Nd:YAG laser

A KTiOAsO4 (KTA) intracavity optical parametric oscillator (IOPO) is achieved within a diode end-pumped acousto-optically Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. With a 25-mm-long X-cut KTA crystal, efficient parametric conversions to signal (1535 nm) and idler (3467 nm) waves are realized. At an incident diode power of 14.9 W, the highest output power of 1.83 W including 1.37 W of signal and 0.46 W of idler radiations are obtained at a repetition rate of 40 kHz, corresponding to a total optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 12.3%. Rate equations model are used to simulate this system, and the theoretical results agree with the experimental ones.

Linewidth narrowing and polarization control of erbium-doped fiber laser by self-injection locking

A novel and simple self-injection locking (SIL) configuration of distributed feedback (DFB) fiber laser is presented. By injecting the feedback light into the cavity of the fiber laser, it can realize that the line-width can be narrowed by half compared with the same system without SIL. Meanwhile the stable single-polarization lasing is achieved and the degree of polarization is improved from 0.165 to 0.989. Then the self-pulsation behavior of the DFB fiber laser is investigated in the injection-locked and unlocked system respectively and the output power fluctuation is reduced from about 4 to 0.1 dBm by injection locking. And the power output characteristics of the DFB fiber laser are also researched by changing the pump current. With increasing the pump current from 30 to 275 mA, the output power of the DFB fiber laser increases linearly and the injection-locked output increases slightly more quickly than the unlocked output. The results have a great potential application in optical communication and high sensitive fiber sensors.

External optical feedback effects on stability of asymmetric DFB-FL and isolation method

The effects of external optical feedback mainly introduced by Rayleigh backscattering (RB) in long lead fiber, reflection of fiber end facet, and the fusion splices on the stability of asymmetric distributed feedback fiber laser (DFB-FL) have been investigated. Theoretical analysis based on the compound cavity model is presented, and the critical length Lp,c of lead fiber is obtained to evaluate the tolerance of DFB-FL to RB. Analysis and experimental results show that RB is the main factor causing the instability. The critical length for the shorter end of our asymmetric DFB-FL is measured to be about 170 m. To isolate the laser from the effect of RB, we propose a method using isolator and WDMs, which is experimentally proved to be an efficient way.

Theoretical analysis of the impact of Rayleigh noise on the performance of distributed Raman temperature sensors

We present a theoretical model to analyze the impact of Rayleigh noise on Raman distributed temperature sensors (RDTS), which use the anti-Stokes and Stokes light or anti-Stokes component only as the demodulation signals. Based on this model, the effects of Rayleigh noise on temperature accuracy, sensitivity, and resolution are investigated both at only one point and in a section of the fiber. The analysis indicates that for RDTS demodulated by anti-Stokes light only, the temperature accuracy, sensitivity, and resolution decrease by about 1°C, 10%, and 0.25°C on the assumption that the Rayleigh noise accounts for 10% of the anti-Stokes intensity. Moreover, for RDTS demodulated by Stokes and anti-Stokes light, the temperature accuracy, sensitivity, and resolution decrease by about 1°C, 10%, and 0.2°C assuming that the Rayleigh noise in two paths is equal to 10% of the intensity of anti-Stokes and Stokes light. The analysis demonstrates that the impact of Rayleigh noise on sensing capacities of RDTS is non-negligible, thus providing a major contribution to the elimination of Rayleigh noise in RDTS.